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For the first time ever, together we will determine and crown the greatest, coolest, best designed college football helmet in America.Is it the Tiger Paw, the scripted A, the Spartan, or the Longhorn? It could be the Howling Coyote of the College of Idaho or the Snarling Bobcat of Peru State. Every single one has a chance to be crowned the Helmet Bowl I National Champion.Every.Single.One.Here is the first look: Visit HelmetBowl.com. Helmet Bowl I begins September 5.Every one of the 777 colleges playing football this year has a helmet which could win Helmet Bowl I. You'll find them all at HelmetBowl.com.

Fans will vote

You, the fan, will determine which helmet is greatest. Weekly polls will determine Conference Champions, then a National Champion. Every student and fan can vote in each Conference every week.

It works like this:

First, each college football conference, from the DI powerhouses to the underdog NAIAs, will compete in a 10-week polling contest to crown conference champions.

Champions enter a 128-team national bracket. Winners of each weekly contest receive a point and the team with the most points at the end of the 10 weeks wins the Conference.

Then, conference runners’ up will compete for one week to fill the remaining slots in the 128-team, four-region, national bracket.

For seven weeks, starting at Thanksgiving, teams will compete weekly to advance through the bracket, from 128 to 64, to 32, 16, 8, 4 and finally the top two teams the week prior to the National Championship.

The Helmet Bowl I Champion will be crowned January 8, 2018.

College Equipment Managers for each team may substitute any official helmet design for every week their team is in contention.

Watch for announcements on Helmet Tracker’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. Helmet Bowl I information, polls, and rules can be found at HelmetBowl.com.

The future is at hand for Rob Stolker, founder of Hummingbird Helmets.

He foresees when every girl and woman playing lacrosse wears a protective helmet. And it's not too far away.

“Three years from now every girl in the country will be wearing them,” he told Helmet Tracker from his New Jersey offices.

The founder of Hummingbird Helmets says that every female lacrosse player in the country will soon be wearing a helmet.

“I’ve maybe sold 100 in New Jersey, but people all across the lacrosse nation are talking about it. There are at least 20 high schools now wearing them.”

Hummingbird just started manufacturing the helmets this year after a three-year development process.

Florida officials have mandated helmets for high school girls’ lacrosse starting in 2018. And more states will follow suit, Stolker says.

“Connecticut and Ohio are talking about it,” he says. “They may be next.”

Others wonder. Will the NCAA or any other body mandate lacrosse helmets for girls and women?

Who decides?

Ellie Woodward was the only non-goalie to wear a helmet on her high school team in Virginia this season.

For now, in most places, the decision to outfit girls and women lacrosse players with helmets is one the players, their parents, and coaches make. Cheryl Woodward and her daughter Ellie made that decision recently.

“Ellie received a concussion last year in practice. It was a follow-through with a stick to the head,” says Woodward. Ellie, a rising Junior, plays varsity lacrosse for Atlee High School in Mechanicsville, Virginia. But her parents decided after the hit to take her out for the last three weeks of the 2016 season. After a hard fall snowboarding early in 2017, while wearing a helmet, the family decided to put a lid on it and buy Ellie a lacrosse helmet.

“She had absolutely no qualms when we told her we were going to buy a helmet,” Woodward said.

Ellie, who has played lacrosse since elementary school, and her teammates accepted the helmet.

“Her best friend, the goalie, also wears a helmet. The girls on the field will ask her about it, and she makes up bizarre stories about why she wears it.”

More than often, Ellie and her goalie friend are often the only ones on the field wearing a helmet, but Woodward sees that changing. “At this stage, it’s an individual choice. I think it’s a good idea, but I would not push for it to be mandatory at this point,” she says.

Changing the game?

The argument against mandating helmets for female lacrosse players seems to settle upon this: It will change the game—make it more violent.

“Girls play under these rules that are supposed to make it a non-contact sport,” says Hummingbird’s Stolker. “The old school mentality says that putting a helmet on will make the game more physical—that it will turn into the boys’ game.”

But he sees a growing advocacy for the helmets. “There is a growing understanding about head trauma and the repercussions of concussions,” Stolker says. He says more Athletic Directors are looking into the issue with concerns not only about injury and concussions but the liability.

Helmet Tracker contacted Cascade, the primary manufacturer of lacrosse helmets who produces the Women's LX. Representatives there declined to comment for this story.

Woodward says most contact in girl's lacrosse is incidental, but it still happens. She told Helmet Tracker that appropriate refereeing would prevent physical incidents. But appropriate refereeing requires trained, seasoned referees. “We don’t have enough refs,” she says. “It’s the fastest growing sport in the country. Finding qualified refs is tough.”

Growth in WLAX

Indeed, women’s lacrosse is growing.

“It’s growing faster at the collegiate level,” said Brian Logue, Director of Communications at US Lacrosse.

He called helmets for female lacrosse players a “hot button issue” and said he could not predict the future of rules and standards. “There is a definite market for the helmets. It could become a mandate in other places; it could remain optional.”

Helmet Tracker is not affiliated with any lacrosse helmet manufacturer.

“I am grateful,” Eddie told us this week. “It means a lot going from an intern to my first real job—having bills to pay!”

Eddie sat for the Athletic Equipment Managers’ Association certification exam in June during the Atlanta convention. He passed and immediately added his certification to his resume. Soon he was being interviewed. Now, he begins a job as Assistant to the Director of Equipment Operations at Tennessee State University.

“Camp starts this week, so we are really hopping here,” he said.

GENEROSITY OF NEVADA

Helmet Tracker announced earlier this month that Michael Dryer won the scholarship, and indeed he did. When we contacted the University of Nevada, which paid for his exam, we were asked to pass it along.

“We are always looking for opportunities to help out, too,” Damien Garnett, Assistant Athletic Director of Equipment at Nevada, told us. “Pass it on. We are glad to help out.”

AEMA Office Manager Sam Trusner had picked Michael’s name randomly from an Illini helmet with names of those who applied for the scholarship. Ten equipment managers applied. Eddie’s name was picked as a runner-up, if needed.

AEMA CERTIFICATION KEY

Eddie, now a Tiger, worked at USA Football camps this summer while looking for full-time work. He said getting certified by AEMA was key to landing a job.

“I believe getting certified served a huge role. Before, when I applied to jobs I didn’t feel like I was getting a good look. Since I got certified I had more confidence and felt like I was seen as a professional.”

There was this box, see, in the equipment room of the New York Jets when he arrived there as an equipment manager in 2014. It was, Andrew was told, to be filled with any unused gear—from gloves to T-shirts. He saw it fill up.

He had no idea that box would link him to Malawi where he would spend three weeks in 2017 teaching orphan kids and learning from them.

Pastor’s Kid

Andrew Johnson grew up in Tyler, Texas the son of a pastor. He heard the sermons, bowed his head at the table, and believed. His family served the church and the community. Charity work was expected.

He went to Oklahoma State, worked with the football team as an equipment manager, and graduated with a degree in exercise and sports science.

He interned with the Jets during the team’s 2012 training camp, then was invited back for seasonal internships for two years. In May 2014 he was hired as a full time assistant equipment manager.

“I was so blessed to get this job,” Andrew says.

Clean Out Box

You’ll find Managers on a Mission boxes throughout NFL and college football equipment rooms. They are called Clean Out for a Cause and they fund the mission. Most of the discarded equipment and team apparel goes on missions trips to orphanages in Africa. Some is sold to fund the trips.

Managers on a Mission sends the future leaders of sport on extended trips to serve orphans and villages.

“We are the future leaders of sport,” founder Drew Boe likes to say. He offers the trips to equipment managers throughout the country. Many apply. 21 were chosen this year to travel.

It was the box in the Jets’ equipment room that introduced Andrew to MOAM. He thought the trips were strictly for student managers. He soon learned otherwise.

2017 Trips

This year, five teams spread out to five countries in Africa. Each landed in a Rafiki village and worked with orphans and other local kids, teaching them to apply the principals of God’s Word through sports and into life.

Andrew was assigned to Malawi.

“Malawi is on the east side of Africa,” Andrew says. “Growing up here we get these images in our head of Africa—the Lion King or the open plans, but it’s not like that, not where I was. It was lush, green, beautiful.”

Each of the five teams taught five principles.

Principle 1: God alone is worthy of your worship.

Principle 2: God’s love moves you from fear to freedom.

Principle 3: God provides His Word and the Holy Spirit to help you grow.

Two-Way Impact

Andrew Johnson spent three weeks this summer in Malawi with Managers' on a Mission.

“The impact on me was that it really touched me to see the faith those kids had and how well versed they are in scripture,” Andrew told Helmet Tracker. “This trip made me very, very grateful for the opportunities we have here just by being born here.”

“These kids, many have high hopes of becoming doctors and scientists and such, but for them there are many obstacles, “ Andrew said. “The lack of resources in this country was eye opening. But these kids know that if they want to try to make it, they need to get out of where they are.”

Drew tells us the five teams were able to mentor teenagers at a deeper level than in the previous four years of trips.

“It was really affirming to see how well these kids absorbed what we were trying to show them,” Drew said. “You see change, transformation right in front of you.”

At the end of the three week trip, kids who took part write letters about their experience.

“These kids really understand how applicable God’s Word is to every area of their life. They are given incredible head knowledge of God and His Word at the orphanage, but this is an opportunity for the application.”

Drew is amazed every year how the Managers on a Mission teams pour out their lives for three weeks, serving the kids, serving the villages.

Transformation

For Andrew, coming home to the U.S., to the Jets getting ready for training camp and the 2017 season, he has changed as well.

“I was inspired to pray more, to study the scriptures more. To see their faith and know these are young kids but very strong in the Spirit, I was inspired,” he said. “It was very humbling to go into a village and these kids have this understanding of God’s Word—it’s far beyond where I know I am. Their pursuit of God is inspiring.”

By now the five teams of student equipment managers have landed in five African countries, collapsed in their lodgings, and explored a few of their surroundings. Soon they will start their three weeks of sports camps.

“Future leaders of sport,” Drew Boe says. It’s a phrase he uses repeatedly to describe these select student managers who volunteered for the trips, not knowing exactly where they were going at the time, not knowing who they were going with.

Five Managers on a Mission teams arrived in five different countries this week to teach life-lessons to kids at orphanages.

The trips, to orphanages in Nigeria, Zambia, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia, are designed to teach local kids biblical principles through sports camps and to give long-term missionary workers a summer break.

It’s not an easy assignment.

“We see our team members as model student managers. They are hard-working, okay with being behind the scenes, committed to doing what needs to be done,” Drew says. “At the heart of it is hard work and humility.”

MOAM History

Drew started Managers on a Mission just four years ago after taking a mission’s trip of his own. While in Rwanda with the Rafiki Foundation, God began to transform Drew. The trip changed his direction, his heart, his vocation.

The trajectory he had created focused on a career in sports. First, he served as a student equipment manager at the University of Minnesota. That led to a couple of NFL internships before he landed at Virginia Tech as a grad student. There, Drew found the equipment room again. He was on his way, working hard, making contacts, learning the ropes.

But the seeds planted during the Rwandan trip began to grow and change all that. He began to listen, to wonder, to dream.

“God put it on my heart to combine the sports industry with what He was doing at these orphanages,” he recalled. With the encouragement of a professor, he wrote the framework for a non-profit organization for a class project. Would it stop there? Drew didn’t know.

He took a job as an Assistant Equipment Manager at Auburn, but at the same time decided to launch the mission with the help of mentors and friends.

“Less than a year later it was growing at a pace that it needed my full attention. The doors were opening.”

AEMA Platform

When he stepped to the stage at the Athletic Equipment Managers Association convention in Las Vegas in 2013, he didn’t know what would happen. He explained what Managers on a Mission was about and hoped the men and women listening would respond.

Managers on a Mission team members teach life-lessons through sport.

Drew had an inkling they would. Equipment managers, he knew, were humble, hard-working, and generous.

“Equipment managers treat others the way they want to be treated,” Drew says. It’s a biblical principle, coming straight from Jesus in Matthew 7:12.

“The AEMA has been an incredible blessing to us. Equipment managers respond generously.”

2017 Trips

This year’s trips are the fourth summer MOAM has sent student managers abroad. About 40 students applied for the African trips this year. The 21 men and women chosen hail from Colorado, Virginia, Minnesota, Indiana, Arkansas, Florida, New York, Texas, and elsewhere.

“My manager experience has taught me how to serve others selflessly and give me a good knowledge of sports,” wrote Donald Roundtree from Texas A&M. “I hope this translates to my ti

Student Equipment Managers travel thousands of miles to teach life-lessons through sport. These are our future leaders!

me in Malawi.”

“I’m very excited for this trip because my entire life from an early age I’ve loved volunteering and helping out with various community service and volunteer experiences,” wrote Andrew Johnson, from Oklahoma. “I’ve never been involved with something to be able to reach as far as Africa, so I consider this a great opportunity to reach a broader range of people and to spread the word and love of God!”

Drew knows the orphaned children who will play sports for these three weeks won’t be the only ones blessed by the trip.

“We believe the reason we send the student managers on these trips, and it’s an investment of about $3,000 each, we believe this is one of the most transformational experiences we can provide to grow servant leadership within each of them. They will grow in their relationship with Christ as they see Him work in these villages, with the kids, and within themselves.”

The biggest challenge these short-term missionaries will face will be the enormous drain on their energy. Equipment managers are used to long hours, hard work, and difficult environments.